AT&T has offered free Apple TV’s, a year of HBO and discounted prices during its efforts to boost subscriber growth since its initial launch. If none of these offers have been enticing enough to get you to switch to the telecom giants OTT service, don’t fret, AT&T is not done trying. Its latest effort, AT&T is enticing potential customers with two free Roku Premiere boxes for any new DirecTV Now, AT&T Unlimited Choice or Unlimited Plus customers that prepay for two months of service.
DirecTV only introduced Roku support in May of 2017, and is wasting no time capitalizing on the new compatibility. This new offer is available for any tier of the DirecTV Now service, including the $35 “Live a Little” offering.
The $69.99 Rokue Premiere is the generally considered to be the middle of the road offering from Roku. The box is capable of 4K streaming, though that feature is irrelevant for DirecTV Now customers since the service tops out at 1080p. However, given the competitive nature of the OTT streaming services market, consumers can expect to see 4K offerings in the near future from DirecTV Now. The Premiere does support Amazon, Netflix and other services which do offer 4K content
DirecTV Now has been plagued by a history of issues since its initial launch, when it was pummeled by an unpredicted 200,000 new subscribers in a month. The influx led to issues like streaming breaks and users reportedly being locked of their accounts.
There were so many issues that AT&T’s president of technology and operations Bill Hogg was forced to issue a statement saying “[DirecTV Now] ramped up a lot faster than we ever thought it would, which is a great thing but also caught us a bit flat-footed on a couple things”.
This free Roku offer is the latest play by AT&T to keep DirecTV Now relevant through continued subscriber growth. Will it be enough? Time will tell.
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